Afanasy Fet
Encyclopedia
Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (Foeth, , later changed his name to Shenshin (Шеншин); — ), was a Russia
n poet regarded as one of the finest lyricists in Russian literature
.
.
Brief biographies usually maintain that Fet was the son of the Russian landlord Shenshin and a German woman named Charlotta Becker, who at the age of 14 had to change his surname from his father's to that of Fet, because the marriage of Shenshin and Becker, registered in Germany, was deemed legally void in Russia. Detailed studies reveal a complicated and controversial story.
It began in September 1820 when a respectable 44-year old landlord from Mtsensk
, Afanasy Neofitovich Shenshin, (described as a follower of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
's ideas) returned to his Novosyolky estate from the German spa
resorts where he had spent a year on a recreational trip. There he had rented rooms in the house of Karl Becker and fell for his daughter Charlotta Elizabeth, a married woman with a one-year-old daughter named Carolina, and pregnant with another child. As to what happened next, opinions vary. According to some sources, Charlotta hastily divorced her husband Johann Foeth, a Darmstadt
court official, others maintain that Shenshin approached Karl Becker with the idea that the latter should help his daughter divorce Johann, and when the old man refused to cooperate, kidnapped his beloved (with her total consent). One thing is certain: in the autumn of 1820 22-year old Charlotta Foeth found herself at Shenshin's Novosyolky estate. In October (or November, depending on another source) she gave birth to a boy who was christened Afanasy Afansyevich Shenshin and registered in the local metrics as Shenshin's son (a fact which Shenshin had to concede could not be true several years later). The pair married in 1822 .
The question of Fet's ethnicity has been a matter of some debate too. People who knew Fet well (among them were the poet Yakov Polonsky
and members of Leo Tolstoy
's family) referred to Charlotta Foeth as 'a German Jew'; according to Tatyana Kuzminskaya (Sophia Tolstaya's sister), Fet's "greatest grievance in life was the fact that he was not a legitimate Shenshin like his brothers (who treated him as a brother) but the illegitimate son of a Jew named Foeth. He refused to understand that the name 'Fet' was now superior to that of Shenshin, and that he himself had created it - a fact that Leo Tolstoy tried in vain to convince him of. There are numerous marginal theories as to Fet's origins. One was mentioned (in a 1937 autobiography) by Igor Grabar
who asserted that "…it was a well-known fact that Fet's father, a Russian 1812 army officer, who was returning from Paris through Königsberg
, met a Jewish beauty near Korchma, fell in love, bought her from her husband, took her to Russia and married her". According to another (the Russian women's magazine Sudarushka advocated it), Charlotta Elizabeth Becker came from an "ancient aristocratic family based in East Germany" while Johann Becker was an illegitimate son of Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse
, who insisted on Johann and Charlotta's marriage, making Afanasy Fet none other than the cousin of Maria Alexandrovna. Sudarushka calls Fet "the 3rd great German on the Russian Parnassus after Khemnitser
and Küchelbecker
".
When Afanasy Fet was 14 years old, an official request came from Germany as to the details of his birth certificate. Discrepancies were revealed, and Oryol
's consistory decided that from then on the boy should go by his German father's name and be stripped of all the privileges of nobility he otherwise would have had rights to. This was quite a traumatic experience for Afanasy who by this time completely identified himself with Shenshin and not Foeth. More controversy was added to the case by the fact that, while Shenshin admitted he indeed could not possibly be Afanasy's biological father, Johann Foeth back in Darmstadt refused to consider him his own son. As a result of the long and painful Shenshin-Foeth negotiations, the boy was finally given "the true Hesse-Darmstadt
citizen" name of Afanasy Foeth. Even this rather humiliating outcome was a merciful alternative: otherwise, as an illegitimate child, he'd have fallen to the bottom of the Russian social hierarchy.
n town of Werro
, where (allegedly with some help from Vasily Zhukovsky
) in a German boarding school owned by a Krummer. While there he received a letter informing him that from then on his name was Foeth and not Shenshin; without a name, a family, a nationality or anything to hold on to, the teenager felt, in his own words, "as a dog who'd lost its master". It was this cruel transformation, scholars later opined, that has accounted for all the idiosyncrasies and totally pessimistic outlook of a man who spent most of his life contemplating suicide. Once, being on a trip around the countryside at Werro, close to the Russian border, young Afanasy got off his horse, ran up to where the Russian land was supposed to begin, kneeled down and started to kiss the soil. Those were the years, though, when the youngster was beginning to discover in himself poetic gift, at least something to shield him from the oppressive reality. "In quiet moments of total carelessness I was beginning to feel inside of me flowery spirals whirling, as if trying to bring out some unknown flower up to the surface. Each time only stems appeared, without any flowers on them. I was scribbling on my slate desk some verses and wiped them off, finding them unworthy", Fet wrote in an autobiography.
In 1837 another change took place, this time much for the better. Fet's stepfather Afanasy Shenshin took the boy from the Krummer's institution and sent him to the boarding school in Moscow, owned by Mikhail Pogodin
, a respected historian and professor of the Moscow University. In the autumn of 1838 Fet enrolled into the University to study first the law, then philology
. In his first year he started writing poetry (and produced quite a lot of it, Goethe, Heine
and Yazykov
being the major influences) and met Apollon Grigoriev, a fellow student and also an aspiring poet. "Aphonia and Apollosha", as the pair was known, became close friends. Soon Afansy moved to Grigoriev’s house at Malaya Polyanka in Zamoskvoretchye and settled in a small room on the upper floor, often visited by friends, young Yakov Polonsky
and future historian Sergey Solovyov
among them. Later critics regarded Apollon Grigoriev's ideas and poetry technique (namely the romance-like structure and melodism) among Fet's major influences of the time.
In the late 1830s Pogodin received some verses from the boy and gave theme to Nikolay Gogol. "Undoubtedly gifted", such was the verdict of the writer, and it did a lot to boost Fet’s creativity a lot and prompted him to publish a book. It was in Apollon Grigoriev's room that the two friends compiled Fet's first collection, The Lyrical Pantheon (1940), signed A.F. The book, in which the author was beginning to develop a unique style of poetry dealing with the twin subjects of love and nature, caused little of a stir, but was welcomed by some thick journals' critics. In Otechestvennye zapiski
young critic P.Kudryashov, Vissarion Belinsky
's protégé, praised the debut, and his opinion was soon endorsed by Belinsky himself. For the next several years Belinsky continued to maintain that "of all the living poets Fet is the most gifted one".
It was in Grigoriev's house that some of the Fet's better known poetry has been created, now being signed A.Fet. This fuller signature first appeared in the late 1841 under the poem called Poseidon, published by Otechestvennye zapiski. Later historians of literature argued whether it was due to a type-setter's mistake that the Russian letter ё (as in Foeth) in the poet's surname turned into e (as in Fet), but, according to Tarkhov, "this change was significant: in just one moment the name of a 'true Hesse-Darmstadt's citizen' transformed into a pseudonym of a Russian poet".
In 1842 Fet's poems started to appear regularly in Moskovityanin and Otechestvennye zapiski magazines, instantly making their author a literary sensation. One of the young poet's mentors was the former's editor and the Moscow University professor Stepan Shevyryov
who often invited the young man to his home. Critics couldn't get enough of the young master, praising "whiffs of joy" and "fragrant freshness" of his verse. Some of his poems featured in The Best of Russian Poetry compiled by Aleksey Galakhov in 1843. Don't wake her up at dawn..., put to music by Aleksander Varlamov
, became the hit of the time. But for Fet those were the troubled years. "Never in my life did I know a person who'd be so tormented by depression and for the life of whom I'd be so worried. Greatly fearing the possibility of him committing suicide. I was spending hours by his bedside, trying somehow to dispel terrible, chaotic movements of his psyche... He had either to kill himself or turn the sort of man he turned out later", Apollon Grigoriev wrote, meaning Fet's much talked about dichotomy, the poet and the real man coming across as totally different, conflicting personas.
. Early next year Afanasy Fet left Novosyolky estate forever: he went to the Kherson
gubernia and on April 21, following the tradition of Shenshins, joined the Imperial Cuirassier
regiment as a junior officer. Fet's goal was to retrieve the name and all the privileges of nobility he'd lost with it, and he indeed started to progress in ranking but the process was too slow: the nobility granting bar was being continuously risen too.
The one thing Fet enjoyed in the army was discipline, everything else he loathed, complaining bitterly in his letters of utter cultural isolation and financial difficulties "bordering on poverty", calling his experience "life amongst monsters" when "once an hour a Viy
appears in sight and you even have to smile". "Never before have I felt so morally destroyed", he wrote in another letter, speaking of feeling like being buried alive and comparing his 'regaining nobility' mission to the work of "joyless Sisyphus
". Only in the late 1840s, after several years of silence, Fet got back to writing poetry. In 1850 Moskvityanin magazine published Hearts whispering, lips breathing..., it became very popular, was followed by a very successful Poems by A.Fet (Moscow, 1850) collection of poems and heralded its author's return onto the Russian literary scene.
Of many sacrifices Fet had to make on his way to realizing his social ambition, which now was more like an idée fix, one was exceptionally painful and left a scar that's never been healed. In the autumn of 1848 he met and fell in love with a 20-years old daughter of poor Kherson landowner named Maria Lazich, a well educated and intelligent girl, who passionately loved him too. For Fet, though, marrying a penniless girl was out of question, and he abandoned her. In 1851 Maria died. The exact circumstances of this accident remained unclear. Some sources suggest she accidentally set herself on fire; some maintain that was a deliberate move of "a proud and desperate girl who decided life was not worth it without the man she loved. She set her dress on fire with a match, and died of burns, four days later, her last words being: 'He is not guilty’. But the feeling of guilt was immense, and Fet has never been able to get rid of it. This event and the image of Maria would be frequently evoked in his later verses.
While Maria Lazich with her pure love and tragic death has left a distinct mark upon Fet's poetic legacy, his military service did nothing of the sort. What it only succeeded to do was make the schism between Fet the poet and Fet the man even more obvious. In 1853 Fet has been transferred to an uhlan
regiment based nearby Saint Petersburg. During the Crimean war
Fet was serving in the troops guarding the Estonian coastline.
In 1853, supported by Aleksey Nekrasov, he entered the now rising Sovremennik
circle, meeting among many new faces his old friends Ivan Turgenev
and critic Vasily Botkin
. It was at Turgenev's house that Fet has met later Leo Tolstoy
, another young officer who just returned from Sevastopol
. In the #1, 1854, issue of the magazine Nekrasov (now at the helm) informed the readers that from then on Fet would be Sovremennik's major contributor and that he'd provided already a wealth of brilliant material "not just on par but even superior to what's been already published". Not only did he promote Fet as a poet, but he obviously preferred his work to that of others, notably, of his own. Fet was making everybody wonder. Leo Tolstoy's saying: "What could be the source of this inexplicable poetic daring, the true characteristic of a great poet, that's coming from this good-natured, plump officer, is beyond me", expressed the general opinion on the matter.
In 1856 Poems by A.A. Fet came out which was, which was, in effect, a re-worked and cleaned-up (by Turgenev, Botkin, Druzhinin and others) version of the 1850 book. According to writer and memoirist Avdotya Panaeva
, Fet gave Nekrasov and Turgenev total carte blanche
in compiling his 1856 compilation and there was much arguing among the two, the formed protesting against heavy editing. The latter was insisting on drastic cuts and, in the end, has had his way. In a preface to the book, Nekrasov wrote: "Not a single poet after Pushkin would bring such a delight to anyone who understands poetry and readily opens their soul to it, as Fet does. By saying this we do not attempt to equal the two, just make another, quite positive statement: in his own field Fet is as superb as Puskin was in his own, more vast and versatile one".
It was the year of 1856, though, when collections by Fet and Nekrasov came out almost simultaneously, that the conflict of ideas was starting to strain their personal relations. Fet continued to contribute regularly to Sovremennik until 1859, when his being totally out of place in the magazine (now deserted by Nekrasov and Turgenev and dominated by radicals Tchernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov) became too obvious. Before that, in 1859 he published an article On Tyutchev Poetry which outraged many. In it Fet wrote: "The notion that poetry's social mission, ot its moral value, or its relevance as superior to other aspects of it, I regard as nightmarish, and long ago I've got rid of it altogether". The rift with his former friends became obvious and Fet left Sovremennik.
Maria Botkina (daughter of a rich tea-trader and brother of his good friend Vasily), described as unattractive and ashen-faced, but very kind and warm person, totally devoid of jealousy and treating her husband like a nanny treats a child. In 1858 he retired from the army and settled in Moscow. A year later, encouraged by his father-in-law and having overcome his wife's unwillingness to left the city, Fet paid 20 thousand rubles for the totally desolate Stepanovka khutor in the Mtsensk
region of Oryol
gubernia and in 1860 moved to it. In the course of the next 14 years he planted alleys, dug out pondst and turned a piece of naked (if fertile) land into a flourishing garden. Besides, he embarked upon major agricultural activities which proved to be highly lucrative. This kind of retreat confirmed Fet's reputation of a 'social egotist' and provoked fierce criticism from many people who knew him, notably Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
and Dmitry Pisarev. Reviling Fet's pro-conservative essays, Saltykov wrote: "Among those who crawled down into Earth's holes is Fet who hides in a village. In the moments of leisure he does them in turn: now a fine romance, next a human-hating piece, another romance, another human-hater". For eleven years (1867-1877) Fet was working as a local Justice of the peace
and was highly respected by both peasants and fellow landowners.
Meanwhile, Leo Tolstoy who roughly at the same time retired into his Yasnaya Polyana
manor, greeting Fet's decision to "sit upon land" ("Our regiment’s got a fine newcomer…", he wrote in a letter) Unlike Tolstoy, though, who was looking for better working conditions, Fet stopped writing at all. "He turned an agronomist, a 'landlord in desperation', let his beard down, some improbable behind-the-ears curls plus, is unwilling to hear of literature and only damns all journals enthusiastically", Turgenev wrote to Polonsky on May 21, 1861.
In 1862 Fet's articles started to appear in Russky vestnik, dealing with issues like agricultural commerce and economy, written "from the point of view of the one eager to enter the free market". Indeed, the author found himself a perfect entrepreneur – started a horse-breeding farm, built a mill, embarked upon commercial activities. Turgenev, congratulating Fet with another mercurial success, remarked once (to the latter's enjoyment) that never in his lifetime had he met a man who'd pronounce the word tselkovy (ruble) "with such relish, as if he'd already put one in his pocket". Unrepentant, Fet wrote to K.Revelioti, one of his Army officer friends: "I used to be a poor man, a regiment's adjutant, and now, thank God, I am an Oryol, Kursk and Voronezh landowner, I live a beautiful manor with a park. And all this I've got by hard labour, not by some machinations".
and Arthur Schopenhauer
's The World as Will and Representation
. His version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
, published in 1859, was reviewed negatively in Sovremennik by D.Mikhalovsky.
Fet's two collections of essays, From the Village and Notes on Civilian Labour (1862-1871) which were being published in Russky Vestnik, Literaturnaya biblioteka and Zarya magazines, were finely written and, along with essays on very practical things, contained novellas, very much in tune with the village prose of the time. Fet wrote traditional prose too, which, unlike his poetry (and rather more in agreement with his everyday persona) was down-to-earth and realistic, the best example of it being the The Golts Family (1870) short novel which told a tragic story of an alcoholic village doctor's social and mental decline. Those were the years of his close contacts with Leo Tolstoy. Settled at the Stepanovka manor, he often visited the latter at Yasnaya Polyana
.
The stigma of illegitimacy which haunted Fet all through his life, in 1873 was finally dropped, promotion in the army ranks helping him to secure the longed-for admission to Russian nobility
as well. According to the special Tsar Aleksander II
's decree, he's been granted his stepfather's name and with it rights and privileges that went with belonging to this aristocratic Russian family. In 1873 Fet he wrote to his wife: "You won't even imagine how do I hate this Fet name. I implore you not to ever mention it… Should one ask what is the name of all the trials and tribulations of my life, I’ll answer: this name is 'Fet'". Turgenev greeted with sarcasm "the disappearance of Fet and the emergence of Shenshin". Much more understanding and sympathetic was Tolstoy who praised Fet's courage and patience in bringing this painful matter to the end. Now officially Shenshin, the poet retained Fet as a literary pseudonym.
In 1873 Fet bought (for 105 thousand) his second village, Vorobyovka, nearby Kursk
. Here things started to change. "My wife just reminded me that from 1860 to 1877 while being a judge of peace and a rural labourer, I've written three poems, hardly more. Now, as I freed myself from both, in Vorobyovka my muse awoke from many years of sleep and started coming to me as often as it did at the dawn of my life", Fet wrote to Prince Konstantin Romanov
in August, 25, 1891. In 1881 Fet bought a small house on Plyuschikha, in Moscow. From then on he would spend a winter in Moscow, in April would move to Vorobyovka and remaine there till last days of September. Fighting off critics, who ridiculed the incongruity of this wealthy and somewhat pompous landowner's image with that of the author of most sublime, unearthly verse, Fet claimed it was his materialistic pragmatism that provided him "total artistic freedom". Critics were unimpressed; some guessed there lurked deep inner conflict behind such rationalizations.
with this 'different kind of bread' it can be satiated with".
According to Vladimir Semenkovich (Fet's nephew and author of several studies on him) among Fet’s exceptional qualities, unusual for a man quick to express his views so frankly, was his unique ability to stop personal conflicts and make piece between rivaling parties. "Fet was one of the few people who could be seen as true, 'classic' Europeans, in the best sense of this word; with his vast education and delicate manners he was reminding French marquises of the better times. That was exactly why best people of all the 'camps' got attracted to him. Once one met Fet, one became his friend. One could dislike him as a writer, but one could only like him as a man”, wrote Semenkovich.
According to Sergey Tolstoy, Fet was "indifferent to music and was heard to be saying that 'music was just unpleasant noise'" while Taikovsky regarded him as more of a mucician than a poet, compating him to Beethoven. Seen as unpleasant and dour by Tolstoy's children, Fet has been greatly valued by the Yasnaya Polyana host himself. "…That is the reason why we love each other: we two are able to think with, to quote you, 'heart’s brain' as opposed to 'brain’s brain'", Tolstoy wrote to Fet on June 28, 1867. Not long before his death Fet has been granted the chamberlain's title. He was so ecstatic as to adjure his relatives to put him to coffin in a chamberlain’s dress. Many were horrified by how ridiculous he looked. "It seemed strange, this golden-laced jester dress next to this pale, serene face af a dead man that bore somewhat anxious, totally unearthly look", Sophia Tolstaya wrote in her memoirs. Yet it was Fet to whom Leo Tolstoy wrote in April, 1876: "In the final moments of my life I'd like to have two men by my side: my brother and you. It is a joy and pleasure to have nearby a person who in their lifetime was busy examining things lying beyond life's boundaries. You are one of those very few real people in my life who, while keeping rather rational attitude to life, have always stood on its edge, staring into nirvana
. see life clearer because, peering into timelessness greatly strengthens one's vision".
Not long before Fet's death Polonsky wrote in a letter:
This incredulity at the way this man has managed to create inside him not just another world, but a perfect antidote to his own outward persona, was common among those who knew Fet well.
) which only added to the hostility and made him a reviled figure. Even limited editions of the Evening Lights (several hundred copies each) remained unsold, only small circle of friends (Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov
, Strakhov, Polonsky, Aleksey K. Tolstoy
, Tchaikovsky among them) were still interested. Having learned of Evening Lights Vol.4 release, Polonsky wrote in a letter (November 12, 1890): "I wait now and will continue to wait for your Evening Lights. I would have like to add: everybody are waiting, all of the intelligentsia waits for them, but alas, that wouldn't be the case".
In his later years Fet turned to writing memoirs. In 1890 two volumes of My Memories: 1848-1889 were published. Another book, My Early Years, came out posthumously, in 1883. On 28 and 28 of January in the Moscow Hermitage restaurant hall the 50th Anniversary of his literary life took place. Fet seemed greatly pleased with the lavish ceremonies but in a poem called On My Muse' 50th Birthday expressed different kind of feeling, regarding the event as a social 'requiem'. On February 26 Fet was granted the title of a kamerger
by a special monarch's decree. Fet's last poem dates October 23, 1892.
In October 1892, Fet moved from his Vorobyovka estate to Moscow. While visiting Countess Sophia Tolstaya, he caught cold, and later fell very ill with bronchitis. The family doctor, Ostroumov, at one point suggested to Maria Botkina that the patient, being bad as he was, should take communion, but Fet's wife replied: "Afanasy Afanasyevich recognizes none of such rituals" and told the doctor that she was ready to take the sin (of depriving a dying man of communion) upon herself.
On November 21, in the morning, the patient, ever up on his feet, suddenly sent for champaign. His wife protested, arguing that the doctor would have surely prohibited this, but was urgently sent to the doctor to get one such permission. Fet seemed to be in great haste. "Now, go on then and quickly get back", he ordered as she was entering a carriage. As Maria left, Fet told his secretary (a certain Mrs. F.): "Now, come on with me, I will dictate to you". – "A letter?" she asked. "No", came the reply. On a piece of paper Mrs. F. wrote the following: "I see no reason for consciously prolonging the suffering. Willingly I go for what would be inevitable". He signed these words: "November 21. Fet (Shenshin)", with a hand biographer Boris Sadovskoy described as "firm, certainly not the hand of a dying man".
What happened next the biographer explained by "some kind of mental storm people sometimes experience in the face of death. Only temporary madness would make him run about grabbing dinner and paper knives which were obviously not supposed to cause a man serious harm", Sadovskoy wrote. What Fet did first was grab a paper knife from the table before him. Mrs. F. disarmed him, injuring her hand. Then he started running about the house, closely followed by Mrs. F., who was bleeding and calling for help, to no avail. In a dining-room he ran up to a cabinet where table-knives were kept and started jerking the door. Then, panting, he dropped himself on a chair. According to the secretary, his eyes opened wide, as if facing some terrible sight, his hand rose as if to make a cross, then fell down. Next moment he was lifeless. The cause of his death, as it turned out later, was heart attack. The funeral service was held on November 22, 1892, in the Moscow University church. Afanasy Fet was buried on November 23 in his new family vault in the Kleymyonovo the old Shenshin family estate.
. Fet's lyrical poetry, extremely sensual and melancholic, were imbued with tints of sadness and tragedy. "Such lyrical insight into the very core of the Spring and human emotion risen by it was was hitherto unknown in Russian poetry", wrote critic Vasily Botkin
in 1843. Osip Mandelstam
considered him to be the greatest Russian poet of all time. Fet had a profound influence on the Russian Symbolists, especially Innokenty Annensky
and Alexander Blok
, who declared Fet his "great teacher". Fet's poetry greatly influenced Sergey Yesenin and Boris Pasternak
. Tchaikovsky wrote:
Professor Pavel Kudryavtsev argued that the poet had "his very special way of producing verse, the latter having been driven not necessarily by rational thought”, but by melody. “It is of musical nature and... is being realized musically, straight into melody", the critic wrote. With his poetry, "quite unique in terms of aesthetics", Fet has proven that "that the self-sufficient spring of real verse won't ever dry out, not even in the less favourable times", Kudryvtsev wrote.
Yet Fet was never a popular poet during his lifetime. Critic Vasily Botkin remarked that while in the 1860s reviewers generally lauded Fet's poetry, "the general public looked at these praises with incredulity, refusing to see any virtues in Fet's poetry. In other words, he's success is but literary and we think the reason lies in the very nature of his talent", Botkin concluded. Others thought it was Fet's unwillingness to change. "The reason was in his being totally foreign to the spirit of times. Unlike Nekrasov, who expressed this spirit perfectly, always going with the flow, Fet never did, refusing to 're-tune his lyre’s strings', wrote Soviet scholar Dmitry Blagoy.
Fet's aesthetic agenda was first formulated in his essay On Tyutchev’s poems, published in Russkoye slovo magazine in 1859. In it Fet explained his views on the concept of 'pure love' (introduced to the Russian literature by Zhukovsky
and then Pushkin, with his "…genius of pure love" famous line), as the one and only thing that the "pure art" was supposed to serve. While in 1840s and 1850s such ideas were still attractive, in the 1860s’ atmosphere of rising social awareness in the Russian cultural elite Fet found himself flowing against the stream.
Fet developed his personal branch of natural philosophy
, as a kind of mechanism for examining ties, seen and unseen, between man and Nature. In order to come with the whole picture he started to unite his poems into cycles: "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn", "Snows", "Melodies", "Fortune-telling", etc. (each containing poems linked with one general idea and driven by intertwining motifs) which, taken as a whole, were supposed to represent the general picture of human soul. The leitmotif to all of these cycles is that of the protagonist's striving to "merge with what lies outside" of human perception. Only "life outside life bounds" gives man moments of absolute freedom, according to the poet. The major route leading to these outer realms is live Nature, with a soul of its own. Moment of joy is the moment of "one-ness" with Nature (once described as 'heart-blossom': "Night flowers dream all through the day/ But once the Sun's beyond the trees/ Leaves open up and now I hear/ The sound of my heart blossoming", - 1885). Female beauty is seen as part of the picture, and contemplating it is blissful, too. Based on this "philosophy of beauty" was the cycle of poems dedicated to women (A.Brzhevskaya, Sophia Tolstaya, A.Osufieva, and others). This process of regaining unity with nature leads man out of the corrupt real world and brings him ecstatic joy and total happiness, according to Fet.
According to Semenovich, "...common people loved him. The right kind of barin
, no question about", such was the general opinion of him. And this was being said of a barin who never hesitated to speak what he thought was truth - to peasants too, not only to men of his own class". According to Ilya Tolstoy, "father thought his greatest asset was the ability to think independently: he's always had his own ideas, never borrowed them from other people".
Detractors who were pillaring Fet with the "cult of domesticity" he found in the 1860s, ignored an important part of his pathos. What Fet was trying to promote as the idea of 'civil labour' was another "ideal"; he saw "natural attitude towards work" as analogous to love, linking man to Nature and potentially bringing back harmony to the society that had lost it. Part of Fet's 'philosophy of labour' was the romantic notion of freedom. What he advocated was the free development of human character and warned against exceeding regulations in social life. "Sometimes the art of a tutor is restraining himself from destroying what he sees as the ugliness in his subject. Cut of a young fur-tree's crooked branches and you'll kill it, it will die of asphyxiation. Wait for 40 years and you'll see a straight and strong trunk with a green crown…", Fet wrote in 1871. Obviously, the notion of social "waiting" could not appeal to those who called for revolutional changes in the society.
, whom he respected as an arbiter of literary tastes. This tradition continued for many years, until Fet understood that Turgenev had expurgated from his verse the most personal and original elements of his artistic vision.
His last pieces, arguably influenced by Baudelaire, are intricate and obscure: the images are meant to evoke (rather than to record) subtle associations of half-forgotten memories. He once said that the most important thing in poetry is a thread that would bind all the rambling associations into a tightly structured short poem.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n poet regarded as one of the finest lyricists in Russian literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
.
Origins
The circumstances of Afanasy Fet's birth have been the subject of controversy, and some uncertainties still remain. Even the exact date is unknown and has been cited as either October 29 (old style), or November 23 or 29, 18201820 in literature
The year 1820 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Robert Chambers's publishing company publishes The Songs of Robert Burns....
.
Brief biographies usually maintain that Fet was the son of the Russian landlord Shenshin and a German woman named Charlotta Becker, who at the age of 14 had to change his surname from his father's to that of Fet, because the marriage of Shenshin and Becker, registered in Germany, was deemed legally void in Russia. Detailed studies reveal a complicated and controversial story.
It began in September 1820 when a respectable 44-year old landlord from Mtsensk
Mtsensk
Mtsensk is a town in Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Zusha River northeast of Oryol. It stands on the Moscow–Simferopol highway. Population: 28,000 ....
, Afanasy Neofitovich Shenshin, (described as a follower of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
's ideas) returned to his Novosyolky estate from the German spa
Spa
The term spa is associated with water treatment which is also known as balneotherapy. Spa towns or spa resorts typically offer various health treatments. The belief in the curative powers of mineral waters goes back to prehistoric times. Such practices have been popular worldwide, but are...
resorts where he had spent a year on a recreational trip. There he had rented rooms in the house of Karl Becker and fell for his daughter Charlotta Elizabeth, a married woman with a one-year-old daughter named Carolina, and pregnant with another child. As to what happened next, opinions vary. According to some sources, Charlotta hastily divorced her husband Johann Foeth, a Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
court official, others maintain that Shenshin approached Karl Becker with the idea that the latter should help his daughter divorce Johann, and when the old man refused to cooperate, kidnapped his beloved (with her total consent). One thing is certain: in the autumn of 1820 22-year old Charlotta Foeth found herself at Shenshin's Novosyolky estate. In October (or November, depending on another source) she gave birth to a boy who was christened Afanasy Afansyevich Shenshin and registered in the local metrics as Shenshin's son (a fact which Shenshin had to concede could not be true several years later). The pair married in 1822 .
The question of Fet's ethnicity has been a matter of some debate too. People who knew Fet well (among them were the poet Yakov Polonsky
Yakov Polonsky
Yakov Petrovich Polonsky was a leading Pushkinist poet who tried to uphold the waning traditions of Russian Romantic poetry during the heyday of realistic prose....
and members of Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
's family) referred to Charlotta Foeth as 'a German Jew'; according to Tatyana Kuzminskaya (Sophia Tolstaya's sister), Fet's "greatest grievance in life was the fact that he was not a legitimate Shenshin like his brothers (who treated him as a brother) but the illegitimate son of a Jew named Foeth. He refused to understand that the name 'Fet' was now superior to that of Shenshin, and that he himself had created it - a fact that Leo Tolstoy tried in vain to convince him of. There are numerous marginal theories as to Fet's origins. One was mentioned (in a 1937 autobiography) by Igor Grabar
Igor Grabar
Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar was a Russian post-impressionist painter, publisher, restorer and historian of art. Grabar, descendant of a wealthy Rusyn family, was trained as a painter by Ilya Repin in Saint Petersburg and by Anton Ažbe in Munich...
who asserted that "…it was a well-known fact that Fet's father, a Russian 1812 army officer, who was returning from Paris through Königsberg
Königsberg
Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...
, met a Jewish beauty near Korchma, fell in love, bought her from her husband, took her to Russia and married her". According to another (the Russian women's magazine Sudarushka advocated it), Charlotta Elizabeth Becker came from an "ancient aristocratic family based in East Germany" while Johann Becker was an illegitimate son of Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse
Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse
Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse was Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt and later the first Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine....
, who insisted on Johann and Charlotta's marriage, making Afanasy Fet none other than the cousin of Maria Alexandrovna. Sudarushka calls Fet "the 3rd great German on the Russian Parnassus after Khemnitser
Ivan Khemnitser
Ivan Ivanovitch Chemnitzer or Khemnitzer was a Russian fabulist, born at Yenotayevsk, Astrakhan, the son of a German physician of Chemnitz, who had served in the Russian army under Peter the Great. He participated in the campaigns of the Seven Years' War and afterward devoted himself to mining...
and Küchelbecker
Wilhelm Küchelbecker
Wilhelm Küchelbecker was a Russian Romantic poet and Decembrist....
".
When Afanasy Fet was 14 years old, an official request came from Germany as to the details of his birth certificate. Discrepancies were revealed, and Oryol
Oryol
Oryol or Orel is a city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River, approximately south-southwest of Moscow...
's consistory decided that from then on the boy should go by his German father's name and be stripped of all the privileges of nobility he otherwise would have had rights to. This was quite a traumatic experience for Afanasy who by this time completely identified himself with Shenshin and not Foeth. More controversy was added to the case by the fact that, while Shenshin admitted he indeed could not possibly be Afanasy's biological father, Johann Foeth back in Darmstadt refused to consider him his own son. As a result of the long and painful Shenshin-Foeth negotiations, the boy was finally given "the true Hesse-Darmstadt
Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt
The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt was a member state of the Holy Roman Empire. It was formed in 1567 following the division of the Landgraviate of Hesse between the four sons of Philip I, the last Landgrave of Hesse....
citizen" name of Afanasy Foeth. Even this rather humiliating outcome was a merciful alternative: otherwise, as an illegitimate child, he'd have fallen to the bottom of the Russian social hierarchy.
Education and literary debut
At the age of 14 Afanasy was sent to the LivoniaLivonia
Livonia is a historic region along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It was once the land of the Finnic Livonians inhabiting the principal ancient Livonian County Metsepole with its center at Turaida...
n town of Werro
Võru
Võru is a town and a municipality in south-eastern Estonia. It is the capital of Võru County and the centre of Võru Parish.-History:Võru was founded on 21 August 1784, according to the wish of the Empress Catherine II of Russia, by the order of Riga Governor general count George Browne, on the...
, where (allegedly with some help from Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...
) in a German boarding school owned by a Krummer. While there he received a letter informing him that from then on his name was Foeth and not Shenshin; without a name, a family, a nationality or anything to hold on to, the teenager felt, in his own words, "as a dog who'd lost its master". It was this cruel transformation, scholars later opined, that has accounted for all the idiosyncrasies and totally pessimistic outlook of a man who spent most of his life contemplating suicide. Once, being on a trip around the countryside at Werro, close to the Russian border, young Afanasy got off his horse, ran up to where the Russian land was supposed to begin, kneeled down and started to kiss the soil. Those were the years, though, when the youngster was beginning to discover in himself poetic gift, at least something to shield him from the oppressive reality. "In quiet moments of total carelessness I was beginning to feel inside of me flowery spirals whirling, as if trying to bring out some unknown flower up to the surface. Each time only stems appeared, without any flowers on them. I was scribbling on my slate desk some verses and wiped them off, finding them unworthy", Fet wrote in an autobiography.
In 1837 another change took place, this time much for the better. Fet's stepfather Afanasy Shenshin took the boy from the Krummer's institution and sent him to the boarding school in Moscow, owned by Mikhail Pogodin
Mikhail Pogodin
Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin was a Russian historian and journalist who, jointly with Nikolay Ustryalov, dominated the national historiography between the death of Nikolay Karamzin in 1826 and the rise of Sergey Solovyov in the 1850s. He is best remembered as a staunch proponent of the Normanist...
, a respected historian and professor of the Moscow University. In the autumn of 1838 Fet enrolled into the University to study first the law, then philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
. In his first year he started writing poetry (and produced quite a lot of it, Goethe, Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
and Yazykov
Nikolay Yazykov
Nikolay Mikhailovich Yazykov was a Russian poet and Slavophile who in the 1820s rivalled Alexander Pushkin and Yevgeny Baratynsky as the most popular poet of his generation....
being the major influences) and met Apollon Grigoriev, a fellow student and also an aspiring poet. "Aphonia and Apollosha", as the pair was known, became close friends. Soon Afansy moved to Grigoriev’s house at Malaya Polyanka in Zamoskvoretchye and settled in a small room on the upper floor, often visited by friends, young Yakov Polonsky
Yakov Polonsky
Yakov Petrovich Polonsky was a leading Pushkinist poet who tried to uphold the waning traditions of Russian Romantic poetry during the heyday of realistic prose....
and future historian Sergey Solovyov
Sergey Solovyov
Sergey Mikhaylovich Solovyov was one of the greatest Russian historians whose influence on the next generation of Russian historians was paramount. His son Vladimir Solovyov was one of the most influential Russian philosophers...
among them. Later critics regarded Apollon Grigoriev's ideas and poetry technique (namely the romance-like structure and melodism) among Fet's major influences of the time.
In the late 1830s Pogodin received some verses from the boy and gave theme to Nikolay Gogol. "Undoubtedly gifted", such was the verdict of the writer, and it did a lot to boost Fet’s creativity a lot and prompted him to publish a book. It was in Apollon Grigoriev's room that the two friends compiled Fet's first collection, The Lyrical Pantheon (1940), signed A.F. The book, in which the author was beginning to develop a unique style of poetry dealing with the twin subjects of love and nature, caused little of a stir, but was welcomed by some thick journals' critics. In Otechestvennye zapiski
Otechestvennye Zapiski
Otechestvennye Zapiski was a Russian literary magazine published in St Petersburg on a monthly basis between 1818 and 1884. The journal served liberal-minded readers, known as the intelligentsia...
young critic P.Kudryashov, Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...
's protégé, praised the debut, and his opinion was soon endorsed by Belinsky himself. For the next several years Belinsky continued to maintain that "of all the living
It was in Grigoriev's house that some of the Fet's better known poetry has been created, now being signed A.Fet. This fuller signature first appeared in the late 1841 under the poem called Poseidon, published by Otechestvennye zapiski. Later historians of literature argued whether it was due to a type-setter's mistake that the Russian letter ё (as in Foeth) in the poet's surname turned into e (as in Fet), but, according to Tarkhov, "this change was significant: in just one moment the name of a 'true Hesse-Darmstadt's citizen' transformed into a pseudonym of a Russian poet".
In 1842 Fet's poems started to appear regularly in Moskovityanin and Otechestvennye zapiski magazines, instantly making their author a literary sensation. One of the young poet's mentors was the former's editor and the Moscow University professor Stepan Shevyryov
Stepan Shevyryov
Stepan Petrovich Shevyryov was a Russian poet, translator, literary critic and philologist...
who often invited the young man to his home. Critics couldn't get enough of the young master, praising "whiffs of joy" and "fragrant freshness" of his verse. Some of his poems featured in The Best of Russian Poetry compiled by Aleksey Galakhov in 1843. Don't wake her up at dawn..., put to music by Aleksander Varlamov
Alexander Egorovich Varlamov
Alexander Egorovich Varlamov was a Russian composer.Varlamov was born in Moscow in 1801. He was a choirboy at the court in St. Petersburg from 1811, and studied under its director, Dmitry Bortniansky...
, became the hit of the time. But for Fet those were the troubled years. "Never in my life did I know a person who'd be so tormented by depression and for the life of whom I'd be so worried. Greatly fearing the possibility of him committing suicide. I was spending hours by his bedside, trying somehow to dispel terrible, chaotic movements of his psyche... He had either to kill himself or turn the sort of man he turned out later", Apollon Grigoriev wrote, meaning Fet's much talked about dichotomy, the poet and the real man coming across as totally different, conflicting personas.
Military service and the Sovremennik years
In 1844 Fet graduated from the University. This year he had to suffer two more heavy blows. First his uncle Pyotr Neofitovich Shenshin died. A large sum of money he prepared to transfer to the young man after his death has never been found. Later that year, after long suffering, mother Charlotta died of cancerCancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
. Early next year Afanasy Fet left Novosyolky estate forever: he went to the Kherson
Kherson
Kherson is a city in southern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Kherson Oblast , and is designated as its own separate raion within the oblast. Kherson is an important port on the Black Sea and Dnieper River, and the home of a major ship-building industry...
gubernia and on April 21, following the tradition of Shenshins, joined the Imperial Cuirassier
Cuirassier
Cuirassiers were mounted cavalry soldiers equipped with armour and firearms, first appearing in late 15th-century Europe. They were the successors of the medieval armoured knights...
regiment as a junior officer. Fet's goal was to retrieve the name and all the privileges of nobility he'd lost with it, and he indeed started to progress in ranking but the process was too slow: the nobility granting bar was being continuously risen too.
The one thing Fet enjoyed in the army was discipline, everything else he loathed, complaining bitterly in his letters of utter cultural isolation and financial difficulties "bordering on poverty", calling his experience "life amongst monsters" when "once an hour a
Viy (story)
"Viy" is a horror short story by the Ukrainian-born Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, first published in the first volume of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod . The title refers to the name of a demonic entity central to the plot....
appears in sight and you even have to smile". "Never before have I felt so morally destroyed", he wrote in another letter, speaking of feeling like being buried alive and comparing his 'regaining nobility' mission to the work of "joyless Sisyphus
Sisyphus
In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity...
". Only in the late 1840s, after several years of silence, Fet got back to writing poetry. In 1850 Moskvityanin magazine published Hearts whispering, lips breathing..., it became very popular, was followed by a very successful Poems by A.Fet (Moscow, 1850) collection of poems and heralded its author's return onto the Russian literary scene.
Of many sacrifices Fet had to make on his way to realizing his social ambition, which now was more like an idée fix, one was exceptionally painful and left a scar that's never been healed. In the autumn of 1848 he met and fell in love with a 20-years old daughter of poor Kherson landowner named Maria Lazich, a well educated and intelligent girl, who passionately loved him too. For Fet, though, marrying a penniless girl was out of question, and he abandoned her. In 1851 Maria died. The exact circumstances of this accident remained unclear. Some sources suggest she accidentally set herself on fire; some maintain that was a deliberate move of "a proud and desperate girl who decided life was not worth it without the man she loved. She set her dress on fire with a match, and died of burns, four days later, her last words being: 'He is not guilty’. But the feeling of guilt was immense, and Fet has never been able to get rid of it. This event and the image of Maria would be frequently evoked in his later verses.
While Maria Lazich with her pure love and tragic death has left a distinct mark upon Fet's poetic legacy, his military service did nothing of the sort. What it only succeeded to do was make the schism between Fet the poet and Fet the man even more obvious. In 1853 Fet has been transferred to an uhlan
Uhlan
Uhlans were Polish light cavalry armed with lances, sabres and pistols. The title was later used by lancer regiments in the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian armies....
regiment based nearby Saint Petersburg. During the Crimean war
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
Fet was serving in the troops guarding the Estonian coastline.
In 1853, supported by Aleksey Nekrasov, he entered the now rising Sovremennik
Sovremennik
Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that...
circle, meeting among many new faces his old friends Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
and critic Vasily Botkin
Vasily Botkin
Vasily Petrovich Botkin was a Russian essayist, literary, art and music critic, translator and publicist.-Early life:Vasily was the son of a wealthy merchant and the brother of the well known physician Sergey Botkin...
. It was at Turgenev's house that Fet has met later Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
, another young officer who just returned from Sevastopol
Sevastopol
Sevastopol is a city on rights of administrative division of Ukraine, located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea peninsula. It has a population of 342,451 . Sevastopol is the second largest port in Ukraine, after the Port of Odessa....
. In the #1, 1854, issue of the magazine Nekrasov (now at the helm) informed the readers that from then on Fet would be Sovremennik's major contributor and that he'd provided already a wealth of brilliant material "not just on par but even superior to what's been already published". Not only did he promote Fet as a poet, but he obviously preferred his work to that of others, notably, of his own. Fet was making everybody wonder. Leo Tolstoy's saying: "What could be the source of this inexplicable poetic daring, the true characteristic of a great poet, that's coming from this good-natured, plump officer, is beyond me", expressed the general opinion on the matter.
In 1856 Poems by A.A. Fet came out which was, which was, in effect, a re-worked and cleaned-up (by Turgenev, Botkin, Druzhinin and others) version of the 1850 book. According to writer and memoirist Avdotya Panaeva
Avdotya Panaeva
Avdotya Yakovlevna Panaeva , née Bryanskaya, , was a Russian novelist, short story writer, memoirist and literary salon holder. She published much of her work under the pseudonym V. Stanitsky.-Biography:...
, Fet gave Nekrasov and Turgenev total carte blanche
Carte blanche
Carte blanche may refer to:* Blank cheque, a cheque that has no numerical value entered, but is already signed* Full Powers, term in international law referring to the authority of a person to sign a treaty or convention on behalf of a sovereign state...
in compiling his 1856 compilation and there was much arguing among the two, the formed protesting against heavy editing. The latter was insisting on drastic cuts and, in the end, has had his way. In a preface to the book, Nekrasov wrote: "Not a single poet after Pushkin would bring such a delight to anyone who understands poetry and readily opens their soul to it, as Fet does. By saying this we do not attempt to equal the two, just make another, quite positive statement: in his own field Fet is as superb as Puskin was in his own, more vast and versatile one".
It was the year of 1856, though, when collections by Fet and Nekrasov came out almost simultaneously, that the conflict of ideas was starting to strain their personal relations. Fet continued to contribute regularly to Sovremennik until 1859, when his being totally out of place in the magazine (now deserted by Nekrasov and Turgenev and dominated by radicals Tchernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov) became too obvious. Before that, in 1859 he published an article On Tyutchev Poetry which outraged many. In it Fet wrote: "The notion that poetry's social mission, ot its moral value, or its relevance as superior to other aspects of it, I regard as nightmarish, and long ago I've got rid of it altogether". The rift with his former friends became obvious and Fet left Sovremennik.
Retirement
In 1857 Afanasy Fet married in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
Maria Botkina (daughter of a rich tea-trader and brother of his good friend Vasily), described as unattractive and ashen-faced, but very kind and warm person, totally devoid of jealousy and treating her husband like a nanny treats a child. In 1858 he retired from the army and settled in Moscow. A year later, encouraged by his father-in-law and having overcome his wife's unwillingness to left the city, Fet paid 20 thousand rubles for the totally desolate Stepanovka khutor in the Mtsensk
Mtsensk
Mtsensk is a town in Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Zusha River northeast of Oryol. It stands on the Moscow–Simferopol highway. Population: 28,000 ....
region of Oryol
Oryol
Oryol or Orel is a city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River, approximately south-southwest of Moscow...
gubernia and in 1860 moved to it. In the course of the next 14 years he planted alleys, dug out pondst and turned a piece of naked (if fertile) land into a flourishing garden. Besides, he embarked upon major agricultural activities which proved to be highly lucrative. This kind of retreat confirmed Fet's reputation of a 'social egotist' and provoked fierce criticism from many people who knew him, notably Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin , better known by his pseudonym Shchedrin , was a major Russian satirist of the 19th century. At one time, after the death of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, he acted as editor of the well-known Russian magazine, the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, until it was banned by...
and Dmitry Pisarev. Reviling Fet's pro-conservative essays, Saltykov wrote: "Among those who crawled down into Earth's holes is Fet who hides in a village. In the moments of leisure he does them in turn: now a fine romance, next a human-hating piece, another romance, another human-hater". For eleven years (1867-1877) Fet was working as a local Justice of the peace
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
and was highly respected by both peasants and fellow landowners.
Meanwhile, Leo Tolstoy who roughly at the same time retired into his Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya Polyana was the home of the writer Leo Tolstoy, where he was born, wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is buried. Tolstoy called Yasnaya Polyana his "inaccessible literary stronghold". It is located southwest of Tula, Russia and from Moscow.In 1921, the estate formally became his...
manor, greeting Fet's decision to "sit upon land" ("Our regiment’s got a fine newcomer…", he wrote in a letter) Unlike Tolstoy, though, who was looking for better working conditions, Fet stopped writing at all. "He turned an agronomist, a 'landlord in desperation', let his beard down, some improbable behind-the-ears curls plus, is unwilling to hear of literature and only damns all journals enthusiastically", Turgenev wrote to Polonsky on May 21, 1861.
In 1862 Fet's articles started to appear in Russky vestnik, dealing with issues like agricultural commerce and economy, written "from the point of view of the one eager to enter the free market". Indeed, the author found himself a perfect entrepreneur – started a horse-breeding farm, built a mill, embarked upon commercial activities. Turgenev, congratulating Fet with another mercurial success, remarked once (to the latter's enjoyment) that never in his lifetime had he met a man who'd pronounce the word tselkovy (ruble) "with such relish, as if he'd already put one in his pocket". Unrepentant, Fet wrote to K.Revelioti, one of his Army officer friends: "I used to be a poor man, a regiment's adjutant, and now, thank God, I am an Oryol, Kursk and Voronezh landowner, I live a beautiful manor with a park. And all this I've got by hard labour, not by some machinations".
Later years
In the 1860s Fet stopped writing verse and switched to non-fiction, memoirs and translation. In those years he translated the AeneidAeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
and Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
's The World as Will and Representation
The World as Will and Representation
The World as Will and Representation is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition was published in December 1818, and the second expanded edition in 1844. In 1948, an abridged version was edited by Thomas Mann....
. His version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, published in 1859, was reviewed negatively in Sovremennik by D.Mikhalovsky.
Fet's two collections of essays, From the Village and Notes on Civilian Labour (1862-1871) which were being published in Russky Vestnik, Literaturnaya biblioteka and Zarya magazines, were finely written and, along with essays on very practical things, contained novellas, very much in tune with the village prose of the time. Fet wrote traditional prose too, which, unlike his poetry (and rather more in agreement with his everyday persona) was down-to-earth and realistic, the best example of it being the The Golts Family (1870) short novel which told a tragic story of an alcoholic village doctor's social and mental decline. Those were the years of his close contacts with Leo Tolstoy. Settled at the Stepanovka manor, he often visited the latter at Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya Polyana was the home of the writer Leo Tolstoy, where he was born, wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is buried. Tolstoy called Yasnaya Polyana his "inaccessible literary stronghold". It is located southwest of Tula, Russia and from Moscow.In 1921, the estate formally became his...
.
The stigma of illegitimacy which haunted Fet all through his life, in 1873 was finally dropped, promotion in the army ranks helping him to secure the longed-for admission to Russian nobility
Nobility
Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...
as well. According to the special Tsar Aleksander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
's decree, he's been granted his stepfather's name and with it rights and privileges that went with belonging to this aristocratic Russian family. In 1873 Fet he wrote to his wife: "You won't even imagine how do I hate this Fet name. I implore you not to ever mention it… Should one ask what is the name of all the trials and tribulations of my life, I’ll answer: this name is 'Fet'". Turgenev greeted with sarcasm "the disappearance of Fet and the emergence of Shenshin". Much more understanding and sympathetic was Tolstoy who praised Fet's courage and patience in bringing this painful matter to the end. Now officially Shenshin, the poet retained Fet as a literary pseudonym.
In 1873 Fet bought (for 105 thousand) his second village, Vorobyovka, nearby Kursk
Kursk
Kursk is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym Rivers. The area around Kursk was site of a turning point in the Russian-German struggle during World War II and the site of the largest tank battle in history...
. Here things started to change. "My wife just reminded me that from 1860 to 1877 while being a judge of peace and a rural labourer, I've written three poems, hardly more. Now, as I freed myself from both, in Vorobyovka my muse awoke from many years of sleep and started coming to me as often as it did at the dawn of my life", Fet wrote to Prince Konstantin Romanov
Konstantin Romanov
Konstantin Romanov may refer to:* Konstantin Romanov 9born 1985), Russian professional ice hockey player* Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia , second son of the Russian Emperor Paul I...
in August, 25, 1891. In 1881 Fet bought a small house on Plyuschikha, in Moscow. From then on he would spend a winter in Moscow, in April would move to Vorobyovka and remaine there till last days of September. Fighting off critics, who ridiculed the incongruity of this wealthy and somewhat pompous landowner's image with that of the author of most sublime, unearthly verse, Fet claimed it was his materialistic pragmatism that provided him "total artistic freedom". Critics were unimpressed; some guessed there lurked deep inner conflict behind such rationalizations.
Personality
Fet never was a warm and open kind of person, and over the years he was becoming more and more secretive and self-centered. "Not once, as far as I can remember, has he expressed any interest in another person's inner world. I never noticed in him a trace of interest to somebody else's interests, to what other soul feels", wrote T.Kuzminskaya (Leo Tolstoy's wife's sister), a woman whom Fet dedicated one of his most beautiful poems ("The night was shining, trees were full of moonlight…") And yet, Tolstoy himself valued him greatly. "I haven't got anybody except you, you are the man who... in intellectual stakes are higher than anybody else around me. It's only you who can provideAccording to Vladimir Semenkovich (Fet's nephew and author of several studies on him) among Fet’s exceptional qualities, unusual for a man quick to express his views so frankly, was his unique ability to stop personal conflicts and make piece between rivaling parties. "Fet was one of the few people
According to Sergey Tolstoy, Fet was "indifferent to music and was heard to be saying that 'music was just unpleasant noise'" while Taikovsky regarded him as more of a mucician than a poet, compating him to Beethoven. Seen as unpleasant and dour by Tolstoy's children, Fet has been greatly valued by the Yasnaya Polyana host himself. "…That is the reason why we love each other: we two are able to think with, to quote you, 'heart’s brain' as opposed to 'brain’s brain'", Tolstoy wrote to Fet on June 28, 1867. Not long before his death Fet has been granted the chamberlain's title. He was so ecstatic as to adjure his relatives to put him to coffin in a chamberlain’s dress. Many were horrified by how ridiculous he looked. "It seemed strange, this golden-laced jester dress next to this pale, serene face af a dead man that bore somewhat anxious, totally unearthly look", Sophia Tolstaya wrote in her memoirs. Yet it was Fet to whom Leo Tolstoy wrote in April, 1876: "In the final moments of my life I'd like to have two men by my side: my brother and you. It is a joy and pleasure to have nearby a person who in their lifetime was busy examining things lying beyond life's boundaries. You are one of those very few real people in my life who, while keeping rather rational attitude to life, have always stood on its edge, staring into nirvana
Nirvana
Nirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...
.
Not long before Fet's death Polonsky wrote in a letter:
This incredulity at the way this man has managed to create inside him not just another world, but a perfect antidote to his own outward persona, was common among those who knew Fet well.
Evening Lights
Fet was despised and ridiculed by radicals as a mean personality of reactionary political views, but this never concerned his poetry. In the 1870s and 1880's, despite his sharp falling out of fashion and favour with critics, Fet continued to write refined poetry, the Evening Lights series (1883, 1885, 1888, 1891) containing some of his finest work. In the Preface to the Volume 3, Fet scorned the 'civil sorrowfulness' wave (epitomized by NadsonNadson
Nadson can refer to:*Nadson Rodrigues de Souza, Brazilian footballer.*Georgii Adamovich Nadson, Soviet biologist*Semen Jakovlevich Nadson, Russian poet...
) which only added to the hostility and made him a reviled figure. Even limited editions of the Evening Lights (several hundred copies each) remained unsold, only small circle of friends (Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov may refer to:*Vladimir Solovyov , Russian philosopher*Vladimir Solovyov , Soviet actor...
, Strakhov, Polonsky, Aleksey K. Tolstoy
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, often referred to as A. K. Tolstoy , was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright, considered to be the most important nineteenth-century Russian historical dramatist...
, Tchaikovsky among them) were still interested. Having learned of Evening Lights Vol.4 release, Polonsky wrote in a letter (November 12, 1890): "I wait now and will continue to wait for your Evening Lights. I would have like to add: everybody are waiting, all of the intelligentsia waits for them, but alas, that wouldn't be the case".
In his later years Fet turned to writing memoirs. In 1890 two volumes of My Memories: 1848-1889 were published. Another book, My Early Years, came out posthumously, in 1883. On 28 and 28 of January in the Moscow Hermitage restaurant hall the 50th Anniversary of his literary life took place. Fet seemed greatly pleased with the lavish ceremonies but in a poem called On My Muse' 50th Birthday expressed different kind of feeling, regarding the event as a social 'requiem'. On February 26 Fet was granted the title of a kamerger
Chamberlain (office)
A chamberlain is an officer in charge of managing a household. In many countries there are ceremonial posts associated with the household of the sovereign....
by a special monarch's decree. Fet's last poem dates October 23, 1892.
Death
Circumstances of Fet's death caused almost as much controversy as those of his birth. Initial official reports (repeated by some biographers) which simply told that he died in his Moscow home of heart attack, while being formally true, concealed much more bizarre turn of events.In October 1892, Fet moved from his Vorobyovka estate to Moscow. While visiting Countess Sophia Tolstaya, he caught cold, and later fell very ill with bronchitis. The family doctor, Ostroumov, at one point suggested to Maria Botkina that the patient, being bad as he was, should take communion, but Fet's wife replied: "Afanasy Afanasyevich recognizes none of such rituals" and told the doctor that she was ready to take the sin (of depriving a dying man of communion) upon herself.
On November 21, in the morning, the patient, ever up on his feet, suddenly sent for champaign. His wife protested, arguing that the doctor would have surely prohibited this, but was urgently sent to the doctor to get one such permission. Fet seemed to be in great haste. "Now, go on then and quickly get back", he ordered as she was entering a carriage. As Maria left, Fet told his secretary (a certain Mrs. F.): "Now, come on with me, I will dictate to you". – "A letter?" she asked. "No", came the reply. On a piece of paper Mrs. F. wrote the following: "I see no reason for consciously prolonging the suffering. Willingly I go for what would be inevitable". He signed these words: "November 21. Fet (Shenshin)", with a hand biographer Boris Sadovskoy described as "firm, certainly not the hand of a dying man".
What happened next the biographer explained by "some kind of mental storm people sometimes experience in the face of death. Only temporary madness would make him run about grabbing dinner and paper knives which were obviously not supposed to cause a man serious harm", Sadovskoy wrote. What Fet did first was grab a paper knife from the table before him. Mrs. F. disarmed him, injuring her hand. Then he started running about the house, closely followed by Mrs. F., who was bleeding and calling for help, to no avail. In a dining-room he ran up to a cabinet where table-knives were kept and started jerking the door. Then, panting, he dropped himself on a chair. According to the secretary, his eyes opened wide, as if facing some terrible sight, his hand rose as if to make a cross, then fell down. Next moment he was lifeless. The cause of his death, as it turned out later, was heart attack. The funeral service was held on November 22, 1892, in the Moscow University church. Afanasy Fet was buried on November 23 in his new family vault in the Kleymyonovo the old Shenshin family estate.
Legacy
Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet is regarded as the greatest lyric poet of Russia. His verses were highly esteemed by the Belinsky, who ranked him on par with the Mikhail LermontovMikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...
. Fet's lyrical poetry, extremely sensual and melancholic, were imbued with tints of sadness and tragedy. "Such lyrical insight into the very core of the Spring and human emotion risen by it was was hitherto unknown in Russian poetry", wrote critic Vasily Botkin
Vasily Botkin
Vasily Petrovich Botkin was a Russian essayist, literary, art and music critic, translator and publicist.-Early life:Vasily was the son of a wealthy merchant and the brother of the well known physician Sergey Botkin...
in 1843. Osip Mandelstam
Osip Mandelstam
Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...
considered him to be the greatest Russian poet of all time. Fet had a profound influence on the Russian Symbolists, especially Innokenty Annensky
Innokenty Annensky
Innokentiy Fyodorovich Annensky was a poet, critic and translator, representative of the first wave of Russian Symbolism...
and Alexander Blok
Alexander Blok
Alexander Alexandrovich Blok was a Russian lyrical poet.-Life and career:Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were literary men, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg...
, who declared Fet his "great teacher". Fet's poetry greatly influenced Sergey Yesenin and Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
. Tchaikovsky wrote:
Professor Pavel Kudryavtsev argued that the poet had "his very special way of producing verse, the latter having been driven not necessarily by rational thought”, but by melody. “It is of musical nature and... is being realized musically, straight into
Yet Fet was never a popular poet during his lifetime. Critic Vasily Botkin remarked that while in the 1860s reviewers generally lauded Fet's poetry, "the general public looked at these praises with incredulity, refusing to see any virtues in Fet's poetry. In other words, he's success is but literary and we think the reason lies in the very nature of his talent", Botkin concluded. Others thought it was Fet's unwillingness to change. "The reason was in his being totally foreign to the spirit of times. Unlike Nekrasov, who expressed this spirit perfectly, always going with the flow, Fet never did, refusing to 're-tune his lyre’s strings', wrote Soviet scholar Dmitry Blagoy.
Fet's aesthetics and philosophy
The stepping stone of the aesthetics of Fet's romanticism was the idea of "total distinction between the two life spheres: the ideal and the real one". "Only an Ideal sphere gives one an opportunity to take a whiff of a better life", he wrote in his memoirs. This sphere, according to the poet, encompasses: beauty (that "permeates the world" and which "an artists gets drawn to like a bee to a flower"), love (serving as a link between elements of Nature), moments of harmony between the human soul and infinite cosmos and Art as such. Longing for an Ideal, according to Tarkhov, was the driving force of Fet's poetry.Fet's aesthetic agenda was first formulated in his essay On Tyutchev’s poems, published in Russkoye slovo magazine in 1859. In it Fet explained his views on the concept of 'pure love' (introduced to the Russian literature by Zhukovsky
Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...
and then Pushkin, with his "…genius of pure love" famous line), as the one and only thing that the "pure art" was supposed to serve. While in 1840s and 1850s such ideas were still attractive, in the 1860s’ atmosphere of rising social awareness in the Russian cultural elite Fet found himself flowing against the stream.
Fet developed his personal branch of natural philosophy
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science...
, as a kind of mechanism for examining ties, seen and unseen, between man and Nature. In order to come with the whole picture he started to unite his poems into cycles: "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn", "Snows", "Melodies", "Fortune-telling", etc. (each containing poems linked with one general idea and driven by intertwining motifs) which, taken as a whole, were supposed to represent the general picture of human soul. The leitmotif to all of these cycles is that of the protagonist's striving to "merge with what lies outside" of human perception. Only "life outside life bounds" gives man moments of absolute freedom, according to the poet. The major route leading to these outer realms is live Nature, with a soul of its own. Moment of joy is the moment of "one-ness" with Nature (once described as 'heart-blossom': "Night flowers dream all through the day/ But once the Sun's beyond the trees/ Leaves open up and now I hear/ The sound of my heart blossoming", - 1885). Female beauty is seen as part of the picture, and contemplating it is blissful, too. Based on this "philosophy of beauty" was the cycle of poems dedicated to women (A.Brzhevskaya, Sophia Tolstaya, A.Osufieva, and others). This process of regaining unity with nature leads man out of the corrupt real world and brings him ecstatic joy and total happiness, according to Fet.
Political stance
Vladimir Semenkovich, author of several books on his uncle, argued that…According to Semenovich, "...common people loved him. The right kind of barin
Gentleman
The term gentleman , in its original and strict signification, denoted a well-educated man of good family and distinction, analogous to the Latin generosus...
, no question about", such was the general opinion of him. And this was being said of a barin who never hesitated to speak what he thought was truth - to peasants too, not only to men of his own class". According to Ilya Tolstoy, "father thought his greatest asset was the ability to think independently: he's always had his own ideas, never borrowed them from other people".
Detractors who were pillaring Fet with the "cult of domesticity" he found in the 1860s, ignored an important part of his pathos. What Fet was trying to promote as the idea of 'civil labour' was another "ideal"; he saw "natural attitude towards work" as analogous to love, linking man to Nature and potentially bringing back harmony to the society that had lost it. Part of Fet's 'philosophy of labour' was the romantic notion of freedom. What he advocated was the free development of human character and warned against exceeding regulations in social life. "Sometimes the art of a tutor is restraining himself from destroying what he sees as the ugliness in his subject. Cut of a young fur-tree's crooked branches and you'll kill it, it will die of asphyxiation. Wait for 40 years and you'll see a straight and strong trunk with a green crown…", Fet wrote in 1871. Obviously, the notion of social "waiting" could not appeal to those who called for revolutional changes in the society.
Poetry
When Fet first published his poetry in 1842, he was too timid to trust his own artistic taste. He therefore submitted his verse to be examined by Ivan TurgenevIvan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
, whom he respected as an arbiter of literary tastes. This tradition continued for many years, until Fet understood that Turgenev had expurgated from his verse the most personal and original elements of his artistic vision.
His last pieces, arguably influenced by Baudelaire, are intricate and obscure: the images are meant to evoke (rather than to record) subtle associations of half-forgotten memories. He once said that the most important thing in poetry is a thread that would bind all the rambling associations into a tightly structured short poem.
Sample
I Have Come to You, Delighted- I have come to you, delighted,
- To tell you that sun has risen,
- That its light has warmly started
- To fulfil on leaves its dancing;
- To tell you that wood’s awaken
- In its every branch and leafage,
- And with every bird is shaken,
- Thirsty of the springy image;
- To tell you that I’ve come now,
- As before, with former passion,
- That my soul again is bound
- To serve you and your elation;
- That the charming breath of gladness
- Came to me from all-all places,
- I don't know what I'll sing, else,
- But my song’s coming to readiness.